I'm not being pessimistic, (well maybe i am, but who can blame me after waiting half a decade for 2.0 final?) but isn't all that code talk going to be a huge project which will require even more resources to develop than 2.0? I guess a sensible ETA for 3.0 would be seriously not before 2020. 3.0 doesn't seem to be a fork of SMF but something quite innovative, and all the years i've been here in this community, i've learned (painfully) to dread the word "innovative" as it either meant impossible to make or several years to release.

As for 2.0 and subsequently 2.1, why not concentrate the current efforts to fix all those hundreds of bugs from the tracker before moving on to develop 3.0. As an admin with several forums running on SMF software, i would be much more at ease knowing that most of the bugs are fixed, so even if it takes a decade to release 3.0, i'll be at peace and wait for as long as possible. Obviously, if it takes 10 years then i would most probably be using another forum software by then as the SMF software would have become outdated.

Honestly, this announcement feels like an incredibly risky move, knowing the gigantic/desperate problems and record-breaking lengthy development time that the SMF community suffered before 2.0 was finally ready. Don't get me wrong, i care a lot about SMF and i definitely love the ideas here, but without a rock-solid foundation and a sufficiently large number of developers on the SMF team, that project is going to cut all the air out of the current 2.0 and 2.1 project, making everything come to a stand-still and maybe even alienate many team members like before. Oh no... The nightmares are rushing back!

The SMF development team needs to rebuild itself and gather together all the great minds here before going in to tackle such an ambitious project for 3.0. I really want 3.0 but then i would rather just get constant updates every few months than wait 5+ years for an unfinished product. I believe that the average time for a new version should be 1-2 years at most, based on development time at all the other major forum software.

Just speaking for myself (as one of the developers for smCore and SMF 3.0), I don't see us competing with the other major forum software if we put off 3.0 and a new code base any longer. The more time we spend on 2.x, the more time we spend lagging behind the people who are writing modern, innovative code. That being said, 2.x still needs work to solidify it and squash the remaining bugs, and Spuds/emanuele/Antechinus are doing a great job from what I've seen.

As much as I'd love to see more developers working on both 2.1 and 3.0, we're working with what we've got. If more people come along to help out, which is what we want to encourage with a more open development model, then it would certainly speed things up. The biggest problems with 2.0 taking five years to reach gold were developer turnover, writing a custom WYSIWYG editor (which still has bugs, iirc - I don't use it), and feature creep. While we can't guarantee we won't run into any problems like those, as we can't predict the future, we can certainly try our hardest to watch out for them and get a solid product out in a far shorter amount of time.

* Fustrate likes the hard-hitting comments like yours, they make me want to write better/more code

Totally legitimate worries sharks! While there was a plethora of issues that plagued the development of SMF, we certainly aim and hope that we do not see those days again. As far as your concerns about continuing to work on the SMF2.x line, this is just not maintainable nor really feasible. SMF is already behind in development and present coding practices. The move to OOP programming and to have a core framework is very much needed. It really is the only way forward for SMF for a mountain of reasons.

Honestly, this announcement feels like an incredibly risky move, knowing the gigantic/desperate problems and record-breaking lengthy development time that the SMF community suffered before 2.0 was finally ready. Don't get me wrong, i care a lot about SMF and i definitely love the ideas here, but without a rock-solid foundation and a sufficiently large number of developers on the SMF team, that project is going to cut all the air out of the current 2.0 and 2.1 project, making everything come to a stand-still and maybe even alienate many team members like before.

1+Without a lot of new programmer with a very good know how in OOP and all other, this project is dead before starts. My 2 cent...

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